The protagonist of Rabbit Redux is a passive man in his mid-thirties. No longer does he live up to the nickname "Rabbit" left over from his high school days as a fast moving basketball player. Now he stays home to watch television while his wife and son go their different ways. Circumstances are so beyond his control — a dying mother, a teen-age son, an unfaithful wife, and then a lost job — that the protagonist finds comfort in a stoical and passive retreat. Near the end of the novel he has moved back into his boyhood home and is wearing his old basketball jacket. Lacking any obvious sign of intelligence or passion, Harry Angstrom appears to be a born loser, and some critics have faulted Updike for writing such a long novel about a "quintessential anti-hero." It is true that Harry gives himself a low grade — "As...